- Email: [email protected]
Continuing the conversation on voice in academic writing
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
Continuing the conversation on voice in academic writing Paul Kei Matsuda
a,*
, Christine M. Tardy
b,1
a
b
Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA Department of English, DePaul University, 802 W. Belden Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614, USA
We are grateful to Professors Stapleton and Helms-Park for taking the time to respond to our recent article, ‘‘Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author identity in blind manuscript review’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007), thus opening up the space for further discussion of voice in written discourse. We would like to take this opportunity to clarify what seem to us to be some of the misunderstandings about our study, particularly those related to our definition of voice—a definition which differs from that used by Stapleton and Helms-Park. In their response, Stapleton and Helms-Park situate our study as a ‘‘counterargument’’ to their research and believe that we conducted our study to ‘‘support [our] opposition’’. They write: It seems obvious . . . that most of the L2 writers in our 2003 study were not in the same league as Matsuda and Tardy’s participants. . .; this is an issue that Matsuda and Tardy do not address. . . . after making a point of defining voice rather differently from the way we did, they proceed not only to validate their hypothesis (which is clearly their prerogative), but to reject our old one—this in spite of the fact that, as they themselves note, their definition of voice (as identity) is essentially different from our criteria-based one. We did not address these issues because our study was not a direct response to Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003). While it was in part stimulated by two of the most recent and most vocal attempts to critique the notion of voice (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003; Stapleton, 2002), it was not designed to provide any counter evidence. Rather, the main goal of our article was to move beyond the narrow conception of voice as closely, *
1
Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P.K. Matsuda), [email protected] (C.M. Tardy). Tel.: +1 773 325 4145.
0889-4906/$30.00 Ó 2007 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.esp.2007.04.002
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
101
if not essentially, tied to the ideology of individualism. Indeed, we thought of their work not so much as a ‘‘straw man’’ but as a jumping-off point for a more useful exploration of socially-oriented conceptions of voice in written discourse that, in the long run, may have important implications for writing theory and pedagogy. As Stapleton and Helms-Park state in their response, our definition of voice is essentially different from theirs; it therefore becomes quite problematic to draw direct comparisons between our research and theirs. In the first part of our article, we sought to establish the context for our study by problematizing the tendency to conflate the notion of voice with individual voice—a conflation that seems to permeate Stapleton and Helms-Park’s articles on this topic as well as their response to our article. We took issue with Stapleton’ (2002) objection to the consideration of voice as an important issue in the field of L2 writing. As we mentioned in our article, we were particularly perplexed by what seemed to be his contention that voice had been discussed extensively, lending ‘‘power to the notion of voice that is far greater than it deserves’’ (Stapleton, 2002, p. 187). As researchers and teachers, we were troubled by the implication that some research topics should be discouraged because teachers might think they are important. We then considered a recent attempt by Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003) to examine the relationship between voice and writing quality. Contrary to what Stapleton and HelmsPark suggest in their response, our rejection of their hypothesis was not based on the findings of our study. Instead, we focused on theoretical and methodological issues. We fully understood that they took the ‘‘route . . . that is customary in empirical testing in science’’: Does x (here ‘individualized voice’), defined in such-and-such manner, correlate with attribute y (here, writing ‘quality’), measured by such-and-such instrument (here and established L2 writing scale)? Furthermore, if x is the sum of sub-components a, b, c, and d (i.e., the four criteria in our rating scale for individualized voice), do any of the subcomponents correlate with y? This methodological approach was not a problem in itself. Our concerns, as we explained in our article, were the skewed representation of the ‘‘components of voice as identified in the L2 writing literature’’ (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003, p. 247; italics in the original), the discrepancy between what is being measured (the effects of voice-related features) and the choice of instrument (i.e., ESL Composition Profile) that systematically steers readers away from voice-related quality, and the choice of a data elicitation method that did not seem appropriate for studying the effect of voice. Furthermore, when there is no statistically significant correlation, we would expect to see some discussion of alternative hypotheses that may account for the lack of relationship, including possible flaws in the research design; we did not find a sufficient discussion of alternative explanations in Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003) and, therefore, pointed to some possible alternatives in our literature review. In short, we did not feel it was necessary to carry out a study as counter evidence because of the weaknesses that already existed in these two studies. These shortcomings notwithstanding, however, it seems shortsighted of Helms-Park and Stapleton to use their findings to argue that ‘‘in introductory L2 writing courses voice should be treated as a relatively minor concern’’ (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003, p. 256). Again, our definition of voice as socially constructed, by both writers and readers, leads us to the rather different conclusion that voice is not a trivial element of writing. If beginning
102
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
L2 writers do not use voice features in ways that contribute to the overall effectiveness, would it not be possible to argue that those students might need to learn whether, when, and how to use voice-related features to make their writing more effective? Furthermore, if voice does not make a difference for novice writers but may play an important role for advanced writers, as Stapleton and Helms-Park appear to agree, it seems reasonable to consider the acquisition of voice as an aspect of writing proficiency, possibly related to specialized genre knowledge, that can benefit from instruction as students develop their writing expertise. Stapleton and Helms-Park’s response to our article also highlights another major contradiction in their theoretical framework. Citing Elbow (1981), they claim that ‘‘the construct of voice cannot be tested empirically’’—the point they also make in their 2003 article. Paradoxically, they went on to use an a priori set of discursive features as the component of voice for their analysis. Furthermore, Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003) quoted Matsuda’s (2001) definition of voice as a justification for this move, which suggests that they did not fully understand the theoretical framework they were drawing on. The point of Matsuda’s definition was to expand the notion of voice to include not only the writers and their uses of discursive features but also the ‘‘amalgamative effect’’—i.e., the readers’ rhetorical construction of voice mediated by discursive and non-discursive features. A misunderstanding of Matsuda’s theoretical framework also becomes apparent when Stapleton and Helms-Park accuse us, in their response, of ‘‘. . . equating voice with a construct such as identity and then, a posteriori and without clearly delineating guidelines, assembling empirical evidence to support the reader’s reconstruction of identity’’. First, Matsuda (2001) makes clear that ‘‘Voice is . . . distinguished from identity, although it is a significant component of identity’’ (p. 41). In Matsuda and Tardy (2007), we also conceptualized voice as ‘‘one of the terms that has been used to capture the sense of identity in written discourse’’ (p. 236), focusing on the author’s identity as constructed rhetorically by the reader. Second, our study was decidedly exploratory in nature, seeking to identify whether blind manuscript reviewers rhetorically construct the author’s voice and, if so, what discursive and non-discursive features they might draw on in the process. In other words, our study was what Sasaki (2005) has called a ‘‘hypothesis-generating exploratory study’’ designed to move toward valid criteria for further studies of voice in blind manuscript review rather than a ‘‘hypothesis-testing confirmatory study’’ (p. 79). We are also troubled by Stapleton and Helms-Park’s criticism of our study as ‘‘lack[ing] . . . an instrument for regulating data selection and coding’’. To the contrary, our exploration was carefully guided by our interpretation of Matsuda’s (2001) definition of voice: Discursive features may include both form (e.g., sentence structures, organization, the use of transition devices, word choice) as well as content (e.g., the choice of topic and specific examples, argumentative strategies). Non-discursive features may include, for example, the use of margins, the choice of font face and size, the use of blank space between words and punctuation marks as well as the use of extra line-breaks between paragraphs and block quotes. Because the effect on the audience is the key in this definition of voice, it would not be appropriate to determine a set of discursive and nondiscursive features a priori. Instead, we sought to identify the overall impression of the manuscript first and then to identify discursive and non-discursive features that contributed to that impression. (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 239)
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
103
Stapleton and Helms-Park also suggest that ‘‘the usual ‘observer’s paradox’ is further exaggerated in a study where the two reviewers are aware that their own critiques would be scrutinized’’. We must point out that, in designing our study, we were fully aware of this potential pitfall, and carefully planned the data collection procedure to avoid this bias. As we explained in our article, the two reviewers ‘‘were told that the purpose of the study was to understand the blind peer review process, but they were not aware of our specific interest in voice at the beginning of the study’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 239). We did not disclose our particular interest in voice until the second interview, and the first seven questions of the first interview with the reviewers were specifically designed to avoid hinting at the focus of our study. We also indicated in our article that the reviewers volunteered the information about their rhetorical construction of the author’s voice before we had the chance to elicit them: Reviewer #1 referred to the author with the third person masculine pronoun almost immediately—an assumption he later questioned but then believed did reflect his impression of the author’s identity. Reviewer #2 also described aspects of the author’s identity before being asked explicitly about any assumptions he may have had. (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 241) Reviewer #1 also mentioned that ‘‘I sort of imagine this person as a young person’’ in response to the first question about the general impression of the manuscript, and he began referring to the author as a ‘‘guy’’ and ‘‘he’’ before the second question was introduced. Reviewer #2’s comments about the author’s bibliographic network was in response to the fourth question: ‘‘What kind of information were you looking for in evaluating the manuscript?’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 247). Even if the reviewers had become aware of our interest in voice earlier on, the fact that they did not hesitate to discuss their rhetorical construction of the author throughout the interviews seems to suggest that this was not an issue. If, as Stapleton and Helms-Park suggest, these reviewers had believed that having an image of the authors was a problem, they would probably have hesitated to discuss their assumptions. They did not. The hesitation about the gender of the author in Reviewer #1’s transcript was about the nature of the assumption but not about having that assumption. In other words, Reviewer #1 was being self-reflexive about his own gender biases. Stapleton and Helms-Park also challenge us for not problematizing ‘‘the whole notion of Reviewer 1’s gender stereotyping, that is, the implied notion that it is men alone who write combatively’’. We did not critique reviewers’ perceptions because our goal was to identify their perceptions and not to criticize their world view—it was a qualitative study designed to understand rather than to evaluate. We were interested in the reviewers’ perceptions of gender as well as their ambivalence. What Stapleton and Helms-Park characterize as the ‘‘wavering quotation’’, we feel, makes our understanding of the reader’s rhetorical construction of author identity richer and more nuanced rather than simplistic and sweeping. Readers’ ambivalence in their construction of writers’ voice is something to emphasize, we believe, not something to overlook. Stapleton and Helms-Park also seem to assume that one goal of our study was to establish a relationship between the presence of voice and the quality of writing. At this point, we are not making that claim, nor was our study designed to investigate such a relationship. In fact, we explicitly stated that ‘‘We can make no claims regarding the relationship between the reviewer’s constructions of the author’s voice and their respective
104
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
evaluations of the manuscript, though this issue is worthy of further research’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 247). Yet, it would be premature to conclude that voice (a` la Matsuda, 2001) has no effect on writing assessment. Rubin and William-James (1997), for example, have shown that the perceived nationality—not the actual nationality of the writers— affect the rating of student writing. While the idea of blind peer review is in part driven by the premise that ‘‘fair-minded raters are supposed to suppress’’ their assumptions about the image of the author in evaluating manuscripts, our study shows that at least two reviewers did not do so. Now that we have identified some of the possible factors that contribute to the reader’s rhetorical construction of author’s voice, we are currently conducting a follow-up survey study to determine whether or not this phenomenon is idiosyncratic to these two reviewers. Stapleton and Helms-Park conclude their response by arguing how a few changes in discursive features would not have made a difference in the effectiveness of Watson and Crick (1953) letter to Nature. Their choice of example is rather ironic because this letter is one of the scientific documents that has been discussed extensively for the impact of the authors’ rhetorical choices on their success as scientists (Blakeslee, 1997; Fahnestock, 1986; Gross, 1990; Halloran, 1984; Moore, 1994, 2000; Paul, Charney, & Kendall, 2001; Swales, 2004). In closing, we would like to make a plea for open-mindedness in research. To argue that a certain topic is overrepresented in the field because it may not apply to a limited population of students seems to impose an unreasonable constraint on the scope of the field, which deals with a wide range of issues related to second language writing at various levels of instruction in various contexts. It would be more productive if researchers focused their efforts on studying what is relevant to their own contexts, and building theories useful to those contexts, rather than discouraging others from exploring issues that seem relevant and useful for their own purposes. References Blakeslee, A. M. (1997). Activity, context, interaction, and authority: Learning to write scientific papers in situ. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 11, 125–169. Elbow, P. (1981). Writing with power. New York: Oxford University Press. Fahnestock, J. (1986). Accommodating science: The rhetorical life of scientific facts. Written Communication, 3, 275–296. Gross, A. (1990). The rhetoric of science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halloran, S. M. (1984). The birth of molecular biology: An essay in the rhetorical criticism of scientific discourse. Rhetoric Review, 3, 70–83. Helms-Park, R., & Stapleton, P. (2003). Questioning the importance of individualized voice in undergraduate L2 argumentative writing: An empirical study with pedagogical implications. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(3), 245–265. Matsuda, P. K. (2001). Voice in Japanese written discourse: Implications for second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(1-2), 35–53. Matsuda, P. K., & Tardy, C. M. (2007). Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author identity in blind manuscript review. English for Specific Purposes, 26, 235–249. Moore, R. (1994). Using the literature to teach students about science: Writing, rhetoric, and the structure of DNA. Journal of College Science Teaching (November), 114–121. Moore, R. (2000). Writing about biology: How rhetorical choices can influence the impact of a scientific paper. Bioscience, 26(1), 23–25. Paul, D., Charney, D., & Kendall, A. (2001). Moving beyond the moment: Reception studies in the rhetoric of science. Journal of Technical and Business Communication, 15, 372–399.
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Rubin, D. L., & William-James, M. (1997). The impact of writer nationality on mainstream teachers’ judgments of composition quality. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6(2), 139–153. Sasaki, M. (2005). Hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing: Two complementary studies of EFL writing processes. In P. K. Matsuda & T. Silva (Eds.), Second language writing research: Perspectives on the process of knowledge construction (pp. 79–92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Stapleton, P. (2002). Critiquing voice as a viable pedagogical tool in L2 writing: Returning the spotlight to ideas. Journal of Second Language Writing, 11(3), 177–190. Swales, J. M. (2004). Research genres: Exploration and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171, 737–738.
ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
www.elsevier.com/locate/esp
Continuing the conversation on voice in academic writing Paul Kei Matsuda
a,*
, Christine M. Tardy
b,1
a
b
Department of English, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-0302, USA Department of English, DePaul University, 802 W. Belden Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614, USA
We are grateful to Professors Stapleton and Helms-Park for taking the time to respond to our recent article, ‘‘Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author identity in blind manuscript review’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007), thus opening up the space for further discussion of voice in written discourse. We would like to take this opportunity to clarify what seem to us to be some of the misunderstandings about our study, particularly those related to our definition of voice—a definition which differs from that used by Stapleton and Helms-Park. In their response, Stapleton and Helms-Park situate our study as a ‘‘counterargument’’ to their research and believe that we conducted our study to ‘‘support [our] opposition’’. They write: It seems obvious . . . that most of the L2 writers in our 2003 study were not in the same league as Matsuda and Tardy’s participants. . .; this is an issue that Matsuda and Tardy do not address. . . . after making a point of defining voice rather differently from the way we did, they proceed not only to validate their hypothesis (which is clearly their prerogative), but to reject our old one—this in spite of the fact that, as they themselves note, their definition of voice (as identity) is essentially different from our criteria-based one. We did not address these issues because our study was not a direct response to Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003). While it was in part stimulated by two of the most recent and most vocal attempts to critique the notion of voice (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003; Stapleton, 2002), it was not designed to provide any counter evidence. Rather, the main goal of our article was to move beyond the narrow conception of voice as closely, *
1
Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P.K. Matsuda), [email protected] (C.M. Tardy). Tel.: +1 773 325 4145.
0889-4906/$30.00 Ó 2007 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.esp.2007.04.002
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
101
if not essentially, tied to the ideology of individualism. Indeed, we thought of their work not so much as a ‘‘straw man’’ but as a jumping-off point for a more useful exploration of socially-oriented conceptions of voice in written discourse that, in the long run, may have important implications for writing theory and pedagogy. As Stapleton and Helms-Park state in their response, our definition of voice is essentially different from theirs; it therefore becomes quite problematic to draw direct comparisons between our research and theirs. In the first part of our article, we sought to establish the context for our study by problematizing the tendency to conflate the notion of voice with individual voice—a conflation that seems to permeate Stapleton and Helms-Park’s articles on this topic as well as their response to our article. We took issue with Stapleton’ (2002) objection to the consideration of voice as an important issue in the field of L2 writing. As we mentioned in our article, we were particularly perplexed by what seemed to be his contention that voice had been discussed extensively, lending ‘‘power to the notion of voice that is far greater than it deserves’’ (Stapleton, 2002, p. 187). As researchers and teachers, we were troubled by the implication that some research topics should be discouraged because teachers might think they are important. We then considered a recent attempt by Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003) to examine the relationship between voice and writing quality. Contrary to what Stapleton and HelmsPark suggest in their response, our rejection of their hypothesis was not based on the findings of our study. Instead, we focused on theoretical and methodological issues. We fully understood that they took the ‘‘route . . . that is customary in empirical testing in science’’: Does x (here ‘individualized voice’), defined in such-and-such manner, correlate with attribute y (here, writing ‘quality’), measured by such-and-such instrument (here and established L2 writing scale)? Furthermore, if x is the sum of sub-components a, b, c, and d (i.e., the four criteria in our rating scale for individualized voice), do any of the subcomponents correlate with y? This methodological approach was not a problem in itself. Our concerns, as we explained in our article, were the skewed representation of the ‘‘components of voice as identified in the L2 writing literature’’ (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003, p. 247; italics in the original), the discrepancy between what is being measured (the effects of voice-related features) and the choice of instrument (i.e., ESL Composition Profile) that systematically steers readers away from voice-related quality, and the choice of a data elicitation method that did not seem appropriate for studying the effect of voice. Furthermore, when there is no statistically significant correlation, we would expect to see some discussion of alternative hypotheses that may account for the lack of relationship, including possible flaws in the research design; we did not find a sufficient discussion of alternative explanations in Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003) and, therefore, pointed to some possible alternatives in our literature review. In short, we did not feel it was necessary to carry out a study as counter evidence because of the weaknesses that already existed in these two studies. These shortcomings notwithstanding, however, it seems shortsighted of Helms-Park and Stapleton to use their findings to argue that ‘‘in introductory L2 writing courses voice should be treated as a relatively minor concern’’ (Helms-Park & Stapleton, 2003, p. 256). Again, our definition of voice as socially constructed, by both writers and readers, leads us to the rather different conclusion that voice is not a trivial element of writing. If beginning
102
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
L2 writers do not use voice features in ways that contribute to the overall effectiveness, would it not be possible to argue that those students might need to learn whether, when, and how to use voice-related features to make their writing more effective? Furthermore, if voice does not make a difference for novice writers but may play an important role for advanced writers, as Stapleton and Helms-Park appear to agree, it seems reasonable to consider the acquisition of voice as an aspect of writing proficiency, possibly related to specialized genre knowledge, that can benefit from instruction as students develop their writing expertise. Stapleton and Helms-Park’s response to our article also highlights another major contradiction in their theoretical framework. Citing Elbow (1981), they claim that ‘‘the construct of voice cannot be tested empirically’’—the point they also make in their 2003 article. Paradoxically, they went on to use an a priori set of discursive features as the component of voice for their analysis. Furthermore, Helms-Park and Stapleton (2003) quoted Matsuda’s (2001) definition of voice as a justification for this move, which suggests that they did not fully understand the theoretical framework they were drawing on. The point of Matsuda’s definition was to expand the notion of voice to include not only the writers and their uses of discursive features but also the ‘‘amalgamative effect’’—i.e., the readers’ rhetorical construction of voice mediated by discursive and non-discursive features. A misunderstanding of Matsuda’s theoretical framework also becomes apparent when Stapleton and Helms-Park accuse us, in their response, of ‘‘. . . equating voice with a construct such as identity and then, a posteriori and without clearly delineating guidelines, assembling empirical evidence to support the reader’s reconstruction of identity’’. First, Matsuda (2001) makes clear that ‘‘Voice is . . . distinguished from identity, although it is a significant component of identity’’ (p. 41). In Matsuda and Tardy (2007), we also conceptualized voice as ‘‘one of the terms that has been used to capture the sense of identity in written discourse’’ (p. 236), focusing on the author’s identity as constructed rhetorically by the reader. Second, our study was decidedly exploratory in nature, seeking to identify whether blind manuscript reviewers rhetorically construct the author’s voice and, if so, what discursive and non-discursive features they might draw on in the process. In other words, our study was what Sasaki (2005) has called a ‘‘hypothesis-generating exploratory study’’ designed to move toward valid criteria for further studies of voice in blind manuscript review rather than a ‘‘hypothesis-testing confirmatory study’’ (p. 79). We are also troubled by Stapleton and Helms-Park’s criticism of our study as ‘‘lack[ing] . . . an instrument for regulating data selection and coding’’. To the contrary, our exploration was carefully guided by our interpretation of Matsuda’s (2001) definition of voice: Discursive features may include both form (e.g., sentence structures, organization, the use of transition devices, word choice) as well as content (e.g., the choice of topic and specific examples, argumentative strategies). Non-discursive features may include, for example, the use of margins, the choice of font face and size, the use of blank space between words and punctuation marks as well as the use of extra line-breaks between paragraphs and block quotes. Because the effect on the audience is the key in this definition of voice, it would not be appropriate to determine a set of discursive and nondiscursive features a priori. Instead, we sought to identify the overall impression of the manuscript first and then to identify discursive and non-discursive features that contributed to that impression. (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 239)
P.K. Matsuda, C.M. Tardy / English for Specific Purposes 27 (2008) 100–105
103
Stapleton and Helms-Park also suggest that ‘‘the usual ‘observer’s paradox’ is further exaggerated in a study where the two reviewers are aware that their own critiques would be scrutinized’’. We must point out that, in designing our study, we were fully aware of this potential pitfall, and carefully planned the data collection procedure to avoid this bias. As we explained in our article, the two reviewers ‘‘were told that the purpose of the study was to understand the blind peer review process, but they were not aware of our specific interest in voice at the beginning of the study’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 239). We did not disclose our particular interest in voice until the second interview, and the first seven questions of the first interview with the reviewers were specifically designed to avoid hinting at the focus of our study. We also indicated in our article that the reviewers volunteered the information about their rhetorical construction of the author’s voice before we had the chance to elicit them: Reviewer #1 referred to the author with the third person masculine pronoun almost immediately—an assumption he later questioned but then believed did reflect his impression of the author’s identity. Reviewer #2 also described aspects of the author’s identity before being asked explicitly about any assumptions he may have had. (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 241) Reviewer #1 also mentioned that ‘‘I sort of imagine this person as a young person’’ in response to the first question about the general impression of the manuscript, and he began referring to the author as a ‘‘guy’’ and ‘‘he’’ before the second question was introduced. Reviewer #2’s comments about the author’s bibliographic network was in response to the fourth question: ‘‘What kind of information were you looking for in evaluating the manuscript?’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 247). Even if the reviewers had become aware of our interest in voice earlier on, the fact that they did not hesitate to discuss their rhetorical construction of the author throughout the interviews seems to suggest that this was not an issue. If, as Stapleton and Helms-Park suggest, these reviewers had believed that having an image of the authors was a problem, they would probably have hesitated to discuss their assumptions. They did not. The hesitation about the gender of the author in Reviewer #1’s transcript was about the nature of the assumption but not about having that assumption. In other words, Reviewer #1 was being self-reflexive about his own gender biases. Stapleton and Helms-Park also challenge us for not problematizing ‘‘the whole notion of Reviewer 1’s gender stereotyping, that is, the implied notion that it is men alone who write combatively’’. We did not critique reviewers’ perceptions because our goal was to identify their perceptions and not to criticize their world view—it was a qualitative study designed to understand rather than to evaluate. We were interested in the reviewers’ perceptions of gender as well as their ambivalence. What Stapleton and Helms-Park characterize as the ‘‘wavering quotation’’, we feel, makes our understanding of the reader’s rhetorical construction of author identity richer and more nuanced rather than simplistic and sweeping. Readers’ ambivalence in their construction of writers’ voice is something to emphasize, we believe, not something to overlook. Stapleton and Helms-Park also seem to assume that one goal of our study was to establish a relationship between the presence of voice and the quality of writing. At this point, we are not making that claim, nor was our study designed to investigate such a relationship. In fact, we explicitly stated that ‘‘We can make no claims regarding the relationship between the reviewer’s constructions of the author’s voice and their respective
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evaluations of the manuscript, though this issue is worthy of further research’’ (Matsuda & Tardy, 2007, p. 247). Yet, it would be premature to conclude that voice (a` la Matsuda, 2001) has no effect on writing assessment. Rubin and William-James (1997), for example, have shown that the perceived nationality—not the actual nationality of the writers— affect the rating of student writing. While the idea of blind peer review is in part driven by the premise that ‘‘fair-minded raters are supposed to suppress’’ their assumptions about the image of the author in evaluating manuscripts, our study shows that at least two reviewers did not do so. Now that we have identified some of the possible factors that contribute to the reader’s rhetorical construction of author’s voice, we are currently conducting a follow-up survey study to determine whether or not this phenomenon is idiosyncratic to these two reviewers. Stapleton and Helms-Park conclude their response by arguing how a few changes in discursive features would not have made a difference in the effectiveness of Watson and Crick (1953) letter to Nature. Their choice of example is rather ironic because this letter is one of the scientific documents that has been discussed extensively for the impact of the authors’ rhetorical choices on their success as scientists (Blakeslee, 1997; Fahnestock, 1986; Gross, 1990; Halloran, 1984; Moore, 1994, 2000; Paul, Charney, & Kendall, 2001; Swales, 2004). In closing, we would like to make a plea for open-mindedness in research. To argue that a certain topic is overrepresented in the field because it may not apply to a limited population of students seems to impose an unreasonable constraint on the scope of the field, which deals with a wide range of issues related to second language writing at various levels of instruction in various contexts. It would be more productive if researchers focused their efforts on studying what is relevant to their own contexts, and building theories useful to those contexts, rather than discouraging others from exploring issues that seem relevant and useful for their own purposes. References Blakeslee, A. M. (1997). Activity, context, interaction, and authority: Learning to write scientific papers in situ. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 11, 125–169. Elbow, P. (1981). Writing with power. New York: Oxford University Press. Fahnestock, J. (1986). Accommodating science: The rhetorical life of scientific facts. Written Communication, 3, 275–296. Gross, A. (1990). The rhetoric of science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Halloran, S. M. (1984). The birth of molecular biology: An essay in the rhetorical criticism of scientific discourse. Rhetoric Review, 3, 70–83. Helms-Park, R., & Stapleton, P. (2003). Questioning the importance of individualized voice in undergraduate L2 argumentative writing: An empirical study with pedagogical implications. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(3), 245–265. Matsuda, P. K. (2001). Voice in Japanese written discourse: Implications for second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10(1-2), 35–53. Matsuda, P. K., & Tardy, C. M. (2007). Voice in academic writing: The rhetorical construction of author identity in blind manuscript review. English for Specific Purposes, 26, 235–249. Moore, R. (1994). Using the literature to teach students about science: Writing, rhetoric, and the structure of DNA. Journal of College Science Teaching (November), 114–121. Moore, R. (2000). Writing about biology: How rhetorical choices can influence the impact of a scientific paper. Bioscience, 26(1), 23–25. Paul, D., Charney, D., & Kendall, A. (2001). Moving beyond the moment: Reception studies in the rhetoric of science. Journal of Technical and Business Communication, 15, 372–399.
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Rubin, D. L., & William-James, M. (1997). The impact of writer nationality on mainstream teachers’ judgments of composition quality. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6(2), 139–153. Sasaki, M. (2005). Hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing: Two complementary studies of EFL writing processes. In P. K. Matsuda & T. Silva (Eds.), Second language writing research: Perspectives on the process of knowledge construction (pp. 79–92). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Stapleton, P. (2002). Critiquing voice as a viable pedagogical tool in L2 writing: Returning the spotlight to ideas. Journal of Second Language Writing, 11(3), 177–190. Swales, J. M. (2004). Research genres: Exploration and applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Watson, J. D., & Crick, F. H. C. (1953). Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature, 171, 737–738.